January 02, 2005

Poisoning The Well

A short article on downloads which contain spyware. Seems that people are sprinking sharing sites with, in essence, trojan horses, containing popups, spyware and malware. Downloading a file? Be prepared to find out if it can ruin your machine.

What sickens me is that this isn't the first time that someone's proposed putting malware on P2P services. Similar proposals were put up by the entertainment industry a while back. It's a poor way to deal with the problem of illegal file trading.

Start out with the fact that you're destroying someone else's property. Ever had a virus? Ever had it destroy your hard drive? Remember how much you lost in work, pictures, etc? I've had it happen a couple of times. Weeks, months worth of work down the drain. It's tragic, but it's preventable. Same thing happens with spyware and adware. It can destroy and kill your drive; few people back up regularly, even fewer use multiple drives. Enough spyware can ruin your machine.

$1000+ bucks gone over a $15 CD. Justice? Hardly.

Right as we speak, my dad's trying to recover from a 500+ item malware scourge. He's had to wipe his drive, reload his system, and start from scratch. Did my dad download something odd? Nope; he doesn't even use P2P software. He's just surfing. And his computer has to be wiped.

It's vigilante justice: disproportionate to the crime, and wreaks havoc on innocents.